Awards Ceremony Succeeds With Dull Precision

March 26, 1986|By Bill Kelley, Television Writer

A mediocre year at the movies (EQ) a dull Academy Awards ceremony.

The 58th annual Academy Awards presentation, as produced by veteran filmmaker Stanley Donen, moved briskly, contained almost no irritating celebrity faux pas and few no-shows, and ran only 15 minutes overtime. Donen should be as proud of himself as the rest of us are puzzled by the Academy`s choices.

Donen, co-director of such classic MGM musicals as On the Town and Singin` in the Rain, might be criticized as self-indulgent for his inclusion of time- consuming production numbers - such as one featuring Howard Keel and such past MGM musical starlets as Cyd Charisse, Ann Miller, Debbie Reynolds and Jane Powell.

But Donen was simply doing what he does best (and what is seldom done well, if at all, on television these days), and a lesson can be learned from that. When William Friedkin, a director of downbeat, chilling suspense movies (The French Connection, The Exorcist), staged the 1977 Oscars, he tried to buff up his own image and make the show as upbeat as possible. Friedkin was pathetically miscast, and the broadcast, running far into overtime, was a travesty.

Friedkin`s show contained Vanessa Redgrave`s notorious ``Zionist hoodlums`` speech (in which she defended Palestinians against Israeli extremists), and writer Paddy Chayefsky`s subsequent tirade against her. No one had the sense to cut either of them off, a tactic Donen firmly threatened to use if any star pulled a similar, grandstanding stunt.

Apparently, Donen`s highly publicized gambit worked. Apart from some silly gushing and posturing by Sally Field (introducing the best actor nominees, she said, ``Let`s see which one you really, really like,`` a reference to the fool she made of herself in last year`s acceptance speech), the show sailed smoothly along.

The immediacy of live television assured a level of unpredictability. Recipients for Oscars in special effects, sound and makeup continued the tradition of winners in minor categories delivering the longest, dullest, most esoteric (``I`d like to thank my wife, my mom, my dad ...``) acceptance speeches.

Equally depressing was the fact that Sydney Pollack, a competent, dull, middle-range director of mainstream Hollywood features, made two trips to the winner`s podium, and managed to say nothing of even marginal interest at either time. (Pollack accepted Oscars for directing Out of Africa - in which he inexplicably beat John Huston - and for producing the film, which won best picture.)

As always, the Oscars prompted a torrent of day-after venom. Entertainment critics for the three networks found themselves grilling such inarticulate winners as Pollack and William Hurt (best actor), who muttered monosyllabically as interviewers nodded (or desperately rolled their eyes).

NBC`s Gene Shalit, entertainment critic for Today, finally lowered the coffin lid by bitterly trashing the Oscar show on Tuesday morning. After denouncing its neglect of directors like Huston and Akira Kurosawa (Ran), and questioning several of its other selections, he closed with the following savage rebuke: ``The bad news is, I hear they`re going to have an Academy Awards next year.``